SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Bird e-scooters took Springfield by storm when they arrived last September.

Now the city plans to expand the program due to its popularity. 

“So we view them as an alternative form of transportation for people. They’re convenient. They reduce the need for parking in the city,” said City Traffic Engineer Grady Porter. “We see a lot of benefits from them and we anticipate that they would serve a good purpose in the city.”

These GPS-tracked e-scooters let pedestrians rent them through an app and ride around designated city areas like downtown, Commercial Street or the Missouri State campus. 

But this summer the city will open the geo map to allow riders to travel to different parts of the city. 

“Right now it goes from Commercial Street to Grand and then the east and west boundaries are National over to Campbell. And we anticipate expanding from Kearney Street down to Cherokee Street and then from Kansas over to Glenstone,” said Porter.

While the city wants to see if this expansion could grow ridership, some people feel that scooters could cause problems. 

“So it’s just more moving and cleaning for the people who work with the scooters,” said Ajdin Korkaric. 

The city says that this summer will be a trial run and the expansion of the geo map could mean more scooters to come. 

“Right now we have 55 scooters and we’re anticipating on adding possibly 40 to 50 more with the large expansion,” said Porter.